Nokia stock jumps 21% in the last 5 days. Reason to be bullish?

If you follow the stock market, today was an interesting day to be a Nokia investor as the stock jumped over 12% to close at $3.31 a share. For the last 8 weeks, Nokia’s stock has been hovering around the $2.65 mark—sometimes going up slightly, sometimes going down—but always around that price point. But for the last few days, it’s been creeping up with a big explosion today, actually peaking at $3.40 before coming down slightly before the close of the market.

The reasons for the large increase appear to be tied to two events including positive news of the Lumia 920 sales and the launch of HERE on iOS. What’s funny is we’d argue both news items are rather inconsequential and if anything, not exactly great news. But backing up our theory that investors and business analysts are either completely misinformed, insane or both, the rise in stock while good for Nokia may be premature.

Nokia's stock has been on the rise lately, closing at $3.31 a share today

“Wow. I had to apologize to my 4S for wasting space for this steaming pant-load of an app.”

Yikes. In other words, it’s not like iOS users are now in love with Nokia or that Google should be shaking in their boots.

That’s not to put down Nokia too much either. We’re betting that the Finnish company probably rushed out HERE for iOS to take advantage of the Google-gap and Apple Maps failures and we can’t blame them for wanting to exploit the situation. In fact, it seems to have worked. Wall Street is responding well to the notion that Nokia may be more than a phone company, but one of services as well.

The other news was based on a report that the Lumia 920 was sold out in Germany. The report is tenuous at best because we all know that the 920 is hard to find anywhere in the world due to shortage of supply, with demand playing an undetermined factor at this point.

We’re not trying to rain on Nokia’s parade here as anecdotal evidence is certainly strong that the 920 is doing well. Just yesterday we were at our local AT&T store picking their brains on the topic and the conclusion is that while the HTC 8X is selling lightly, the 920 is piquing much more interest and sales. But no one knows just how many 920’s have sold and no one knows how many they would be selling if stock were readily available.

But hey, those on Wall Street smell a winner in Nokia (even if it's based on dubious info) and it has reflected in a tremendous stock gains. That positive momentum is sometimes all that is needed to get things going—people hear that Nokia and the Lumia 920 are a “big hit” and it becomes self-reinforcing.

Next thing you know, the 920 is the big must have item for the 2012 holiday season.

I would say the fact that the Lumia 920 is being used as a hammer, is being thrown, burned and sliced and still works is a good reason.
Also, it is being sold out everywhere so the numbers should be good.
And finally, investors do not look only at the Lumia 920 but at the potential that Nokia has that it way higher than the one it showed with Symbian.

Well I wonder how qualified the OP is to make judgement on whether the rise of NOK stock is premature. Since when a Tech Journalist has the confidence to speak like an Investment analyst? To tip it off, Nok share has been priced as if the company is incompetent and will definitely go bankrupt. Today's price action is just reflecting the fact that NOK is going nowhere and competent enough to create products with strong differentiation from HTC, Samsung, Apple...
Let's face the truth by looking at Lumia 920 and the crush bulding up behind this phone. How much percentage of this crush do you think is due to WP8? Or is it because of the Camera and maps tech that Nokia built into this phone.
My judgement is almost 0% for WP8, WP8 is an alright OS but seriously lacking interm of apps and usability, and it's not something that people will ditch their current iOS or Android to go for. It's the hardware capabilities & features that Nok brought to the table plus the brand recognition that is luring consumers to buying the Lumia 920.
Considering this is a WP website, I would expect more gratitude from OP toward NOK and NOK's investors who suffered a great deal through this transition to WP. "Share rise is premature" is not exactly the right thing to say at this moment technically and morally.

So, let me get this straight. You critique Daniel's conjecture on Nokia stocks assuming he has no market investment or analyst background. Then you proceed to proffer your own conjecture as a rebuttal to what he wrote. You then continue on to make baseless assumptions about how 0% of buyers are purchasing the 920 for the operating system.

You further speculate that no current Android or iOS users would ever switch to the app lacking, poor usability suffering Windows Phone. Finally, you close by, again, chastising Daniel's opinion and using your opinion as a basis to do so.

I don't know aout the stock momment but i have to hand it to him about the Os comment. Do you know how many times that i was fustrated with not being able to get things easily done? I mean i wanted to read the pdf files i had on my phone and opned the pdf reader not knowing that i have to go to the office tile to open them. I mean come on i at least expect it to be possile to see the pdfs on the phone in the pdf reader app itself. If one has like more than 200 types of documents on the phone then good luck scrolling through all of them.
Now that i look at it again, the pdf files can miraculously be seen in the pdf reader. What the hell is going on? Its driving me crazy! Another thing is why did they leave out the file explorer? That makes my phone more like a regular phone than a smartphone or pocket pc.

Right on Wyn6. I came back to Nokia precisely BECAUSE They joined with MS. I couldn't stand my iPhone and was thrilled when it fell apart on its own. I really wanted to try out the new WP7, but wouldn't since it was all Samsung. Love Nokia phones (and was in fact using my e51 in place of my busted iPhone), but was disappointed in their smartphone offerings. Thoroughly stoked when I heard Nokia and MS were joining up, so bought an unlocked 800 to try out the ecosystem. Solid phone and an OS (even as limited in "apps" as it was) that did everything I needed.
It was back in April, that I started watching Nokia stock and couldn't believe the beating it was taking. Took a pretty substantial position at 1.78 and have been accumulating ever since as more puzzle pieces were turned over and put in place. If Nokia had adopted the Android OS, I wouldn't have bought a Nokia phone and seriously doubt I'd be invested. I doubt they'd be looking at their current gains as well, nor do I think the future would look as bright. It's a great combination, and it is hard to look at the phone and OS and realize that it is a product of two companies. Great job Nokia and Microsoft!

Yeah I guess you're right, had Nokia not joined MS and stayed away from 2 years screwups of WP, there wouldn't be such a gain as today since NOK share price would have never got this low. Pureview camera, unibody body design as well as sturdiness and build quality of Nokia phone has nothing to do with WP. Just ask yourself if Nokia is selling Android Lumia 920, what is the chance of their success over Samsung? Huge, people WANT their hardware, brand and that Pureview Camera, and will not have to worry about not having the app they need.
Now I'm not bashing WP since I have HTC HD7 and Lumia 900 myself but that's simply because I want to be different, not because of the superiority of the OS. I mean WP department at MSFT has been a joke, has Apple or Google ever come up with excuses such as "we did not have enough time to build notification center"? Look at the speed that Google is rolling out their Android OS, 3 months ago they had 4.1 and now they have 4.2. If MSFT is not gonna up their game to at least be as competitive as Google, I doubt WP market share will go anywhere, and that's very unfortunate to NOK investors as they don't derserve to be back stabbed continuously for the last two years, lose most of their fortune and at the same time get laughed by WP fans, how ironic.

Something most people tend to forget is the fact that WP wouldn't be where it is today without Nokia. I just read a comment in another thread stating the lumia 920 is sold out but there still have the 8x, 8s and lumi 820. It seems nokia didn't expect the demand they are getting which shows us that the sales is more Nokia specific than it is Microsoft specific. All the problems i had had till now with my 920 have all been software specific and what stoped me from returning my phone isn't Microsoft ut Nokia and Nokia alone. I mean the uild quality, i have held many phones ut wow my lumia 920 makes them look and feel like crap!

Abdul9, I agree that WP wouldn't be where it is today without Nokia. And Nokia wouldn't be where it is right now without WP IMO. It's a perfect match. It's growing...quickly. I been following every single piece of information about the hardware and the software that I can get my hands on for months and things are looking bright. Didn't I read that Apple is going to 6 months release cycles? Hmmm wonder why. And guess what that is going to do? Use up the "good idea" pipeline twice as fast.
For the thongvua, ya, it sucks for investors that the stock price got taken down. That's what happens when there is blood in the water. But hey, there was plenty of time for those investors to get out with a loss and buy back in a lower levels. Or.. Average down. I've done both over the course of several years with one particular stock. ya, it was painful, but in the end I made 100% profit and learned a lot (like patience).
As far as Android,my contention is that Nokia would just be another face in the crowd. Short term "maybe" they don't lose as much...you just don't know. Another thing is you just never know how much longer Android is going to remain viable (do a search on "how much money does google make from android"). Another problem is, you can't see into the future and you don't know what these two companies (Nokia and MS) are cooking up. I believe that MS got a serious wakeup call and is moving hard into the next generation of mobile computing. And.. For me anyway... The reason I have a Lumia 920 is BECAUSE of the Nokia and MS combination (not that that matters to anyone but me :-) ).
With Nokia and MS, it's all about the future. For those that weren't scared and bought in low.. well, those risk takers are being rewarded.

You are right that Nokia wouldn't be where it is today without Microsoft both in a negative and "positive" point of view. If would thinks about it seriously then one would realize that Nokia gave Microsoft more than what Microsoft gave or is giving Nokia. Imagine Nokia made Meegoo, Android and Wp devices, what do you think would have happened? I think Wp would have gone down the hill cos there are a lot of people that uy Nokia devices cos of the maps, some cos of the camera and so on. Nokia made and is still making the ultimate sacrifice for Microsoft unlike Samsung and Htc and what did Microsoft decide to do? Well they named Htc's Wp as the flagship wp device. I personally will want Nokia to be more successful than they were before cos there are about the only company now that is trying their best for their customers.

Thanks a great deal. I couldn't have said it better. i made a comment in another thread that nokia should kick Microsofts butt for messing up a lot of wp8 and wins 8 features. I mean if Microsoft had made wp8 80% useful then a lot of us will have as good as nothing to complain about and the android and iphone users will be able to badmouth us less.

My son came over tonight to and showed him my 920 and he said "Its not an iPhone".
So I said tell you what lets have a photo contest in the dark. I took him outside and totaly pwnd him!
Might night shot of my tree you can see everything green grass, bark, street. His iPhone shot "with flash" was a big blur.

Actually I'm willing to bet that the stock increase has nothing to do with any of what was mentioned, their are two VERY big investment firms that of them raised their shares owned 90% the other 700% we are taking about millions of shares, and this news has been getting around the last few days, alot of smaller investors and sentiment in general follow the lead of big investment banks, goldman and sachs being one of the investors, owning something like 130 million shares. I would say without concrete sales numbers it has VERY little to do with any stores claiming they sold out, i'm quite involved in different types of investments, if nokia gets back to breaking even or slightly in the black their stock is worth almost double what it is now easily, once the fear of the company going bankrupt the big investors have started buying nokia stock again, as this company making any money at all is worth much more than 3.00/share. If they come out saying they lost significantly less than last quarter the price will probably stay above 3, if they end up making money which i doubt for a few more quarters it will go up even more.

The sell out in Germany is true but can't be with many units I think. I'm in Cologne (4th biggest city in the country) and the picture was like: Saturn, Mediamarkt (big chains like Bestbuy, belonging to Metro group) had up to 30 black 920s and a small number of white ones in their flagship stores. Red & yellow no where to be seen. T-mobile, base and o2 don't carry 920s. Mobilcom (Big reseller like phones4u) which offers all colors only had

I mentioned this on another thread and ill mention this again, 920 is selling out where I work. We have been replenished about 5 times already because we keep selling out. We dont get HUGE shipments but for windows phone sales, I have never seen this. I have never seen any other windows phone get replenished as quickly as the 920. I've also looked in the return bin and I dont see any. 820 and 8X sales are looooooooooooooow.

That is well and all but not impressive without any numbers. The Lumia 900 was thought to sell OK but only got what 600.00 units in the US? My brother has it and it is an absolutely beautiful device... glad that I waited for the L920 though :-D

I bought in at $2.72 seeing the writing on the wall. Investment is about sentiment and perception. BP dropped to record lows after the spill but the spill didn't lower their profitability, 6 months later their stock doubled. I see this being in response to the 920 selling better than expected, and analysts just want to see Nokia stop the bleeding, and I believe they have and will report that in their next quarterly financials.

iOS users are afraid to admit that Nokia came out with a good iOS app. Calling it ugly? It looks very similar to any other app in the app store. Slow? Obviously they haven't used the stock maps app from any generation iPhone. The usual iPhone user is a cry baby about anything non-Apple, they always have been.

Well a little more feedback for investors...i cant stop looking at and holding my phone, it is truly a great piece of kit. No battery issues for me, ive blocked certain apps from running in the background that don't need to be running and its lasted 10 hours of heavy use so no complaints here!!

Large short interest (and since they sold borrowed shares they need to return, they are 100% a buyer). At some point they need to cover. Pretty obvious Nokia and MS are doing the right things. Demand is high, supply seems to be getting out again in the U.S. (judging from I have read in a few places) and getting sold out quickly in others (Germany, Finland, etc). China release is right around the corner...Seems to be pretty easy to put together a long list of positives, that on their own may be "insignificant", but on the whole show a company that is in the middle of a pretty impressive turnaround. Could be something else, but there was 154 million shares traded so far today (there is after hours) where the average volume is around 51 million.

Great news to me as a fan and investor, but they need to keep the momentum going. An update needs to go out ASAP to address battery, overheating and other small issues before those type of news also get to Walstreet.

The battery issue though is very small as their Nokia Care are not getting a lot of complaints. The thing is, they need to figure out if it's hardware, firmware, OS or apps...right now, it appears to the latter two things and not in Nokia's lap (even the 8X has similar issues).

While annoying for those experiencing it, in general this is not really an issue and it appears focussed around Nokia Drive+ which is still beta. Looking at the posts on this on Nokia Support Discussions it seems that there is a number of threads on this in fact there is only a handfull or so of people who repeatedly post they are having this issue.
On the whole I would guess this is not a major problem but that does not mean it should not be addressed.

Here in Germany, i couldnt find a 920 in yellow for weeks. Then i wrote Nokia Deutschland about it. How i was waiting for months, i am a willing customer, they advertise availibility EVERYWHERE and yet - i can't find one.
Two hours later i got a call from Nokia Deutschland. They apologized and sent me an e-mail with a direct link to purchase a yellow lumia 920 with very limited supply on some dedicated nokia reseller i've never heard of. That all happened yesterday. My Lumia will be here this friday.
Got to love Nokia...